It is getting colder than a witch’s titty in your hospital room. You can’t see him, but that’s how you always know. That God damned Shirk is here again.

Shirk stares his not inconsiderable malevolence and hatred at you. That you know without needing to see the rat bastard. You can sense his presence here and in the whole of the room. You feel that stare. You just know he’s going to fuck with you again.

Shirk sits quietly, sniffing periodically, in a chair across the room from you. His presence is making the room temperature drop perceptively.

The demon chooses this moment to thrust his heavy compact body up from the chair. He strides right on over to you and sits on the edge of your death bed which gives creaky protest to his other-worldly weight. Tiny cries of please-please comes muffled from the roomy sleeves of his stained-sticky cloak. The hood is turned up, the blood red eyes burn from deep within a face that is as old as pain.

“Well, well, look at you,” Shirk derisively smirks. “Looks like you’re still all dressed up but can’t get it up to go,” he scoffs and flicks a sharp-nailed yellow finger at your useless pee-pee.

You can still feel the pain, however, and your silent scream makes the life support machine sound an alarm. Shirk looks at you, mock worry fleets past his thickly wrinkled-leather face. He puts an index finger to his lips, smiling, teeth a mad jumble of yellow and grey and whatever the fuck Shirk eats for lunch, and makes like you and he need to be quiet.

Shirk giggles scratchily to himself; being the star of his own show. He reaches in to his big wizard-sleeve and removes a tiny screw-top vial of opaque granules, the movement eliciting another round of please-please from the teeniest-tiniest little humanoid you ever did see. He was hugging the vial with all his might, staring with over-sized greedy bug-eyes through the clear glass at the wonderful drugs inside.

It was mucky all around the center outside of the vial wall where the horny wee gnome had, on countless occasions, blasted his gravy. So much so, it became a crusty railing in which the naked gnome didn’t seem to notice. He’s too busy staring at the drugs, mewling for more, until he gets it, gets balls deep on the scum rail and ejaculates on the vial wall. Then he will pass out with a blissful smile, hugging god in a death grip until he wakes up, begging for more.

Shirk plucks the 2 inch long pleading creature from the vial and holds him between the second and third fingers. On cue, the gnome opens his mouth as wide as he can. He slips out a long tongue and swipes it wet all over his face while Shirk unscrews the lid and dips the little spoon deep into the multi-gram vial. The gnome smacks and smacks at the potent Plata, gobbling up as much as it can before being placed whole up the demon’s nose. Shirk snuffles up the big bumpety-bump, before rinsing and repeating, snorting what the tiny fiend couldn’t get to.

Shirk screws on the top of the vial while the spoon licks the thick Plata paste off his face. Shirk lets the tiny gnome, who is already thrusting at the empty air, grab a tight hugging hold onto the drug vial. Then the little beastie begins to hump the wall, squeaking like a cricket. Shirk drops them both back down into his sleeve, breathing heavy with dark ardor.

Shirk’s eyes brighten with an orange fire smoldering beneath a red-embered glow. He starts moaning to himself, slow-dancin’, swaying to the music.

“Love this shit,” he states, shuddering, hand slipping up under, beneath his cloak, “it’s just balls to jerk off to.”

Beside the sharp pain in the shriveled head of your doolittle, you can not answer, as Shirk already knows. The airway tube has the cuff inflated and is taped securely down your throat, keeps your shit from vocalizing at all. The breathing machine hums smoothly and expertly, filling your wrecked lungs with pressurized gases to keep your wracked ass alive.

“Did ya?” he asks, you say fuck-all. “Cuz if you never have, you don’t know what you’re missing or I’ll suck you straight!”

Hydromorphone-methamphetamine hydrochloride, if you didn’t know, had the lovely sounding Trade name of Duradilauderal. It had an even cozier street name of Plata which is Spanish for silver and slang for folding money. The popularity for Plata was just beginning to be a prairie fire in the Midwest when your body had already wore out. Like a roofied starlet, the party went on without you.

“Probably the only drug you didn’t abuse, if I remember correctly,” shared Shirk.

Too true .

“Sometimes,” Shirk admits, “You stupid fucking humans do mange to come up with something worthwhile.” For emphasis, Shirk pats your skinny stump of a thigh. Then he trails his cold, wrinkly demon fingers up your leg to where the scars of Lilitu’s love bites began. He laughs as he remembers the night she made them at his behest. They were numerous and deep and all over his belly and chest as well.

“That was fun, huh?” Shirk asks. Seeing that you do remember, he chuckles afresh.

Fuck you, asshole.

“But this one is new,” he says and bends to closely check on your latest surgical procedure. This one involved removing the bottom half of your left leg. Your thigh draws to a close in a tightly stitched below the knee amputation. It was recent and still hurts. He gets in real close and smells it. He rises, wincing in mock sympathy.

“You got the gangrene, huh? Too bad, buddy, it smells like liquid shit.” Shirk states flatly, “I’m sure they had no choice but to chop it the fuck off and –Bam! No more leggy for Greggy!” There is still no response from you. “Bet that must’ve hurt like a mo-fo, butterbean,” he says with a nice stump smack.

Blood and light yellow serous fluid splatter the already dirty bed sheet. You howl silently as the pain like fire hits a big nerve cluster and heads north. You break into a sweat, teardrops roll unimpeded down your sunken cheeks and the alarms sound again.

“Anywho,” Shirk resumes with a comic sigh, “I guess I’d better stop playing with you, before the babysitter comes in and catches us.” He gets up, smoothing his cloak, looks back down to you. He says: “Stick around,” laughing at your restraint. “The Fat Lady’s warming up.”

Steven Rage is a brilliant writer - his vision and ability to write of the dark side never fails to blow me away -
He deserves every success and this genre truly has a masterful voice in Steven Rage.
ellen george